Monday, May 24, 2010

Winds of Change

Donna and Topher

Since the last post Inseguire has attended two flyball tournaments, the first one in Warmen SK and most recently in Coaldale AB. In the interim of posts we have moved all our dogs over to Furry Flash from Moose Jaw, the team Cali was on loan to. Flyball is something we do for our dogs, not the other way around, and the politics of a big club can sometimes be overwhelming. That being said we were overdue for a change and Furry Flash was gracious enough to "adopt" all of us.

Warmen marked our first tournament with our new team and proved to be a lot of fun. The lower keyed environment allowed both dogs and people to relax and just enjoy the fun of racing. Sadie finally ran cleanly, and while she is no where near her former self she has given me hope that she will one day get there again. The whole reason we got into flyball was to give Sadie something to do after the move from Ontario and to have her sidelined due to fear was just heartbreaking for me. There is still a lot we need to work on, like her current defensiveness when running, but with perseverance I think we will get there. Cali, as always, was rock solid and eked out some pretty impressive races as the anchor dog. She is a competitive little dog and never ceases to amaze me how hard she will push to stick her nose in front at the wire.

The real star of the weekend though was "Topher" (Inseguire Christopher C) who earned a whopping 1552 points in a single weekend! He was listed full time with his home club, the LloydministerHotdoggers, and as a back up/relief dog for an open team but when the open team pulled their other height dog early on Saturday he ended up running double time. This is a lot for any dog, but especially for the little guys. Thankfully on Sunday the open team found a dog to split the height dog position with him and despite all the extra work he held up both teams to a first place finish in thier respective divisions. All the racing barely seemed to phase him and he ran a new PB of 5.477 late Sunday afternoon. We are so proud Topher and his handler Donna has done an amazing job training and conditioning this little man - way to go Donna and Topher!!

Two weeks later saw us in Coaldale AB for the Redline tournament. Only Cali was running in this one as we thought it best not to overwhelm Sadie now that we were finally on the road to recovery. We did however get to take the puppies into the lanes after racing on Saturday and play recall games. Kiwi was impressive, having only ever seen the jumps once before she did full recalls over all four of them completely ignoring the dogs playing in the other lane. Her focus is outstanding and I am excited for her to grow up so we can teach her more of the game. Tov was the big surprise though. She is amazingly driven and has a fierce tug drive which enabled her to do her very first recalls like a champ. Patton was a hit with everyone, and while he still does recalls for food he charmed the heck out of everyone he met and was a little Casanova all weekend.

The racing itself was great. "Bug", the world's most adorable border collie, made her debut and performed like she had been running her whole life. Bug, Tripp, Dusty, and Cali set a new Furry Flash club record of 18.9, with room to improve and shave time off that the next tournament. Most importantly we had a lot of fun and Cali earned her FDCh-G on the weekend - catching back up to her brother Topher after his amazing weekend in Warmen.